A Concerned Scientist @BE@qoto.org

The paper has some salient, and interesting facts. It's always amazing to me what research comes out of these types of situations, and what assumptions that were made previously don't hold up to scrutiny.

"Here we evaluate the expression of IAV receptors in situ in the mammary gland, respiratory114 tract and cerebrum of cattle, which typically has been considered less susceptible to IAV115 infection5 . Strikingly, was the finding that both the human- (SA-α2,6) and the duck receptors116 (SA-α2,3-Gal-β1,3) were highly expressed in the mammary glands, whereas no expression of117 the chicken receptor (SA-α2,3-Gal-β1,4) was detected. A previous study showed that co-expression118 of both the human- and avian receptors can enhance the receptor binding of H5N1119 isolated from ducks (clade 2.1.1) in vitro23. Combined these findings support the hypothesis120 that the high viral load seen in milk from cows infected by HPAI H5N1 virus belonging to121 clade 2.3.4.4b are due to local viral replication, because these viruses have high affinity for this122 receptor24. Additionally, the avian receptor has been found to be highly expressed in the human123 cornea and conjunctiva25 which may explain the report that conjunctivitis was the dominating124 clinical sign of a person presumably infected by dairy cows in Texas 7."

"The transmission route(s) and the pathogenesis of H5N1 in cows remain unclear,126 and it’s not known if the virus enters the mammary gland by an ascending infection or127
systemically by the blood supply.

...

Suggestions by the USDA that only some udder quarters may be133 involved in infection does, however, argue against a viremic source27."

"The investigation of the IAV receptor distribution in the respiratory tract also135
revealed some novel findings. In the upper respiratory tract and upper part of the lower136 respiratory tract (trachea, bronchi, and bronchioles), the chicken receptor (SA-α2,3-Gal-β1,4)137 was expressed on the surface of the respiratory epithelium, whereas a lack of - or very limited138 expression - of the human and duck receptors was detected. This pattern is the opposite to what139 we found in the mammary gland. The lack of expression of the human receptor in the upper140 respiratory tract of cattle contrasts with findings in humans25,28 and swine22,25 and supports the141 perception that bovines are highly resistant to infection with influenza A viruses of human and142
swine origin when exposed by the respiratory route1,29. In the lung alveolar cells, however, all143 three receptors were abundantly expressed, similar to what has been found in pigs and144
humans22,25,28."

After a peaceful weekend in the woods and some reflection, I decided I am not going to live blog all of the articles that come out about H5N1 any further. I think a lot of it is distraction. That said, I would still like to keep up on the science, and I'm sure other people would, too.

So here's a new story on an article discussing how cows might be a "mixing vessel" for influenza that digs into the receptor types. It "found that tissue from the mammary gland contains abundant receptors of the kind to which avian flu viruses like H5N1 can attach. But brain and respiratory tract tissues contained far fewer of this type of receptor."

https://www.statnews.com/2024/05/06/bird-flu-spread-study-of-h5n1-virus-infection-in-cows/

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.03.592326v1.full.pdf+html

"Human IAVs24 preferentially bind SA-α2,6 (human receptor), whereas avian IAVs have a preference for α2,325
(avian receptor). The avian receptor can further be divided into two receptors: IAVs isolated26 from chickens generally bind more tightly to SA-α2,3-Gal-β1,4 (chicken receptor), whereas27 IAVs isolated from duck to SA-α2,3-Gal-β1,3 (duck receptor). We found all receptors were28 expressed, to a different degree, in the mammary gland, respiratory tract, and cerebrum of beef29
and/or dairy cattle. The duck and human IAV receptors were widely expressed in the bovine30 mammary gland, whereas the chicken receptor dominated the respiratory tract. In general, only31 a low expression of IAV receptors was observed in the neurons of the cerebrum. These results32 provide a mechanistic rationale for the high levels of H5N1 virus reported in infected bovine33
milk and show cattle have the potential to act as a mixing vessel for novel IAV generation."

@RebelGeek99 @maleve

For sure, but, bailouts are always more convenient for our politicians than any other solution.

@RebelGeek99 @maleve

Your question really made me think, and I have a theory that ties into something I've been noticing.

The H5N1 story is actually good for Rich People's Yacht Money.

Rather than a doomer news cycle of COVID and climate change there's this new hot topic and it hasn't actually happened. It's a theoretical, and it reminds people that they need to live life today, because something worse might be coming.

I've been surprised at the extent that people have taken their eyes off of COVID to look at H5N1. One is a raging 5 alarm fire, and one's storm clouds on the horizon with maybe some distant rumbling thunder.

Every day you wake up you're either 1 day or 100 years from the next pandemic, and that's been true every day of your life and will likely be for the rest of your life.

@maleve

I've mentioned this in passing a couple of times over the last couple of weeks, but, this is the realistic outcome for a lot of the dairy and meat industry. The dairy farm down the road from me sells raw milk to people and has MAGA, Trump and Don't Tread on Me flags surrounding their acreage. Federal employees will step foot on that property only after the owners are dead. With 10's of thousands of dairy farms alone there's zero chance public health can "control" this the way many people want.

"AI" is one of those popular topics that I try to steer around. Yes, I know what an LLM is. Yes, I know what it does. I'm just not interested in the non-stop discourse around it.

I'm going to post this so it's out there, and I will mute responses, but, I thought it was worthy of throwing out there anyway.

My wife's a teacher, and she's been noticing her school laptop has really been dragging recently. She checked task manager and the culprit is "Artificial Intelligence(AI) for Windows" taking up tons of resources.

She checked in with her boss and, "Yes! We're so excited for this. We're going to be rolling out professional development trainings about how you can work with AI to develop all of your lessons going forward!" I guess it was only a matter of time until AI started teaching the kids, I just didn't realize that time was now.

No, my wife will not be using this to write her lessons, in case that's unclear.

@ClimateNewsNow

While it's an interesting computer model, we already know this from actually finding them in people's lungs:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969722020009